GERMANY: Kultur Man

When Thomas Mann came to America in 1938, he
said simply: "Wherever I am is German culture." To Germans rallying
against Hitler, or, like himself, driven into exile, the declaration
was a defiant battle cry; to non-Germans it was something of a portent.
"The plot of every one of his novels," said a critic, "concerns an
organism whose vitality is threatened; one can never be sure whether
the crisis will end ineluctably in death or whether it is not instead
the critical point in a rebirth." Because the vitality of that old
organism Europe appeared to be ebbing towards destruction,...